The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s lat­est re­port has high­light­ed the State’s con­tin­ued re­liance on con­tract and short-term em­ploy­ment along­side short­com­ings in pol­i­cy and com­pli­ance, point­ing out that Gov­ern­ment spent more than $1.79 bil­lion on tem­po­rary staffing arrange­ments across the pub­lic ser­vice in 2025.

The re­port shows $1.414 bil­lion was spent on con­tract em­ploy­ment, while a fur­ther $374.8 mil­lion was ex­pend­ed on short-term em­ploy­ment, bring­ing to­tal spend­ing on tem­po­rary staffing mech­a­nisms to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.79 bil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year.

Con­tract em­ploy­ment, as de­fined in the Es­ti­mates of Ex­pen­di­ture, is in­tend­ed for cas­es where there is an ur­gent need for staff, where work is tied to projects of lim­it­ed du­ra­tion, or where spe­cialised skills are un­avail­able with­in the es­tab­lished pub­lic ser­vice.